Mitú Raises $27 Million From AwesomenessTV, Verizon and WPP

Mitú, a digital media upstart catering to Latino youth audiences worldwide, announced a $27 million Series C funding round that includes strategic investors AwesomenessTV, Verizon and WPP Digital.

Existing investors including Upfront Ventures — the venture-capital firm that was the largest investor in Maker Studios, now owned by Disney — also participated in the round. The funding brings Mitú to $43 million raised to date.

“When you look at the investors in this round, we definitely see a synergy with them to work with them and learn from them,” said Mitú CEO Roy Burstin (pictured above). He called out AwesomenessTV’s strength in creating social content, WPP’s global reach with advertisers and Verizon’s distribution capabilities.

Mitú, founded in 2012, delivers some 2 billion monthly video views across platforms including Facebook and YouTube, with a community of 6,000-plus Latino creators. That gives the company the largest global digital reach of any company targeting young Hispanics, according to Burstin. Latinos represent 24% of millennials in the U.S., and that’s “why we think of this demo not as a niche but as a part of the mainstream,” he said.

Mitú has been successful at connecting with Latino youth culture and creators, said Brian Robbins founder and CEO AwesomenessTV (which is majority-owned by DreamWorks Animation). “Through this investment we can work with them to accelerate their programming and distribution even further as demand for branded, premium digital-first content continues to increase,” he said.

WPP chief digital officer Scott Spirit said the Mitú investment “fits perfectly with WPP’s strategy of investing in digital, content and fast-growth markets, such as countries in Latin America, and demographics, such as U.S. Hispanic youth.”

“With young audiences, you need to reach them online and this investment in Mitú is a great vehicle for clients of WPP companies to accomplish that,” Spirit added.

With the funding, Mitú plans to ramp up its investment in sales, content production, and product and technology to expand its content-publishing platform and audience data tools, launch its influencer-marketing platform (mituberos.com) and expand its ecosystem of apps.

“We are going to aggressively scale content creation,” Burstin said. That will span a wide range of formats from video produced for social platforms to longer-form content in traditional TV and movie formats, he said.

Other investors in Santa Monica, Calif.-based Mitú include AMC Networks, Chernin Group, Machinima chairman Allen DeBevoise, Advancit Capital, Daher Capital and Northgate Ventures. The company produces and distributes content in both English and Spanish.